Pinned inside her mangled Mercedes, seriously injured and fading fast, Katie Lentz turned to her rescuers on the lonely open stretch of Missouri highway and asked them to pray.

Struck head-on by a drunk driver on Sunday morning, emergency workers had been battling for an hour and a half to free Lentz, but to no avail.

But as they joined hands a Catholic priest appeared, even though there were no bystanders and the road was blocked, who offered a prayer and an instruction to the rescuers that they would now be able to free her.

Suddenly, heavy equipment needed to cut through the metal arrived from a nearby town and Lentz was pulled from the wreck in time to be saved – but when they turned to thank the priest, he was gone.

Mangled Wreck: Emergency workers were struggling to save Katie Lentz when she was hit head-on by a drunk driver on Highway 19 near to Center, Missouri

Prayer: When emergency workers could not free her – Katie Lentz asked them to stop so that a prayer could be said

Effort: The desperate effort to save Katie Lentz was blessed by a Catholic priest who appeared from nowhere and just as mysteriously vanished

‘He came up and approached the patient, and offered a prayer,’ Chief Raymond Reed told KHQA-TV.

‘It was a Catholic priest who had anointing oil with him. A sense of calmness came over her, and it did us as well.

‘I can’t be for certain how it was said, but myself and another firefighter, we very plainly heard that we should remain calm, that our tools would now work and that we would get her out of that vehicle.’

That is when officers from the neighboring Hannibal Fire Department arrived with their jaws-of-life and Lentz was pulled to safety and put into an air ambulance to hospital.

Turning to thank the guardian angel who had arrived from nowhere at their lowest ebb, the emergency crews could not find him.

The highway had been blocked for a quarter of a mile each end during the hour and a half rescue and no bystanders and parked cars were anywhere near the crash site on Highway 19 near Center.